So he had it for a season and when we played in Europe and Eric couldn’t play because of EU ruling?
Just trying to make sense of it as Eric was our number 7 and Andrei was only here a year before he came.
No-one 'had' the #7 shirt before squad numbering. Although players had preferences and certain positions dictated numbering.
If you played on the right wing you wore that numbered shirt.
Generally for United though, Bryan Robson wore #7 in most of his games so Kanchelskis played right wing but often wore #5 or #8 or some other number. Kanchelskis wore #7 on his debut because Robson didn't play.
In 1991/92 Kanchelskis wore about five different numbers including #7
In 1992/93 Kanchelskis wore #7 pretty much exclusively up until Cantona arrived as Robbo wasn't playing much. Cantona then wore #7 unless Robbo was in the team when Eric would take another number.
In 1993/94 the Premier League introduced squad numbers so players kept the shirt numbers for the entire season regardless of position.
The whole #7 thing has been a hyped thing really since Eric retired and people started talking about a special shirt. Then looking back they saw Robbo, Coppell, Best etc wearing it and it made good marketing.
But given our players of the past you could do that with most numbers up to 11.